Pandagon is daily opinion blog covering feminism, politics, and pop culture. Come for the politics, stay for the complete lack of patience for the B.S. and bad faith coming from conservative leaders and pundits.

The past couple of weeks have been exhausting, which is, of course, by design from anti-choicers. The idea is clearly to declare total war on women’s rights in hopes of wearing us down. Where they fail is in understanding how much feminists are ready for this fight. Most of us are exhausted mainly from the lack of support we get from our liberal brethren, who want reproductive rights to be a third tier issue so badly that they convince themselves that it must be one for the right, even though all evidence points to the fact that Republicans have used abortion more than any other issue for a scorched earth policy in eliminating moderates. We’re also exhausted from trying to convince our liberal brethren that anti-choicers really aren’t just super sentimentalists about fetal life, so much as hysterics that think female sexual liberation is the end of life as we know it. (And in a sense, it is, but only because life as we knew it was so terrible for women.)

These past two weeks have done all our work for us. It’s undeniable now that Republicans think stripping women of basic human rights is, to quote John Boehner, a top priority. Not a third tier issue. A top priority. And, it’s clear that the full court press to cut off federal funding for contraception is about cutting off funding for contraception. The head-in-the-sand strategy isn’t going to work anymore. Sure, the word “abortion” is being flung around a lot, but it’s clear from the Lila Rose videos—and from the fact that Title X funds just don’t go to abortion, full stop—that anti-choicers are making a big play to deprive low income and young women of contraception. Which is something pro-choicers have been saying for a long time now. The skepticism about this has been fading for years now, due to the push for abstinence-only education and the way the Bush administration wouldn’t let emergency contraception go over the counter. But this full-blown attack on contraception access is making it really hard to deny that anti-choicers are just that, anti-choice and anti-sex, and that anti-abortion is just the tip of that iceberg.

One idea I’ve been kicking around is starting a hashtag on Twitter this weekend in support of Planned Parenthood. A sort of thank you to the venerable organization for all they’ve done for Americans and American women in particular. I was thinking #thanksplannedparenthood, but that’s a little long, so I’m open to suggestions. But tweets could be stuff like, for instance, “5 years of contraception, 2 cured UTIs, reassurances I don’t have the clap. #thanksplannedparenthood” Which would be mine, obviously, but I think if we could get hundreds or, better yet, thousands of people doing this, we could put a face on the wonderful, wide-reaching, and necessary work Planned Parenthood does. What do you guys think?

About the Author

Amanda Marcotte is a freelance journalist born and bred in Texas, but now living in the writer reserve of Brooklyn. She focuses on feminism, national politics, and pop culture, with the order shifting depending on her mood and the state of the nation.